


Hard To Keep Track of You (The Fake Empire Remix)

by likeadeuce



Series: Evolution of Riza Hawkeye [5]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Bisexuality, F/M, M/M, Missing Scene, Multi, Mystery, Polyamory, Remix, Stuffed Toys, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:09:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Maes Hughes reconnects with Roy Mustang at the end of the Ishbalan War, he gets more than he bargained for. But then, when you get involved with Roy, isn't that what you bargain for? (Based on volume 15 of the manga; Maes/Roy slash + background Maes/Gracia + Roy/Riza tension, however you read their canon).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard To Keep Track of You (The Fake Empire Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evil_Little_Dog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evil_Little_Dog/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Desert Heat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/163385) by [Evil_Little_Dog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evil_Little_Dog/pseuds/Evil_Little_Dog). 



> Title and epigraph are from the song "Fake Empire," by The National, from which I made at least a couple thematic steals.
> 
> The story is based on the manga series (which parallels but doesn't exactly match the "Brotherhood" anime), though timelines and relative ages were figured out based on internal story logic and might not match canon exactly. I made up Border City for this story, as well as Hughes' family members and their history.
> 
> I had remarkable betas and second-readers on this fic. Resolute talked me through numerous iterations of the story structure, let me know what it needed, and didn't let me be lazy. Destroythemeek/  
> Harmonyangel traded Roy/Hughes thoughts with me, gave me genius ideas for getting things that weren't working to work, and provided expert final beta. This story would not in any way look the way it does without both of them. Stultiloquentia also deserves a shoutout for aiding and abetting my Hughes characterization and generally getting my head in the place to write this to begin with. I can't believe how awesome you folks are.

_It's hard to keep track of you, falling through the sky  
We're half awake, in our fake empire_

Captain Maes Hughes ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair and looked down at the personnel file in front of him. "Can you explain," he asked the desk sergeant, "how a cadet in the Amestrian Army serves six months in a war zone, unscathed, earns commendations for valor and initiative, and then, on the day we get back to Border City, burns her back badly enough to end up in the infirmary? In, and I'm quoting from the file here, 'a cooking accident'?"

"Did you say ‘her’?" The sergeant, showing his first sign of interest in anything Hughes had to say, glanced over. Female combat veterans were still rare enough to be a curiosity. The guy was probably trying to sneak a look at the cadet's picture and see if it was worth concocting an excuse to go by medical and ‘make sure she was all right’. Hughes, who had a kid sister about Riza Hawkeye's age, snapped the folder shut.

The sergeant shrugged. "Figure if the bitch could cook, she'd be married instead of in the army." Then he said, "Oww!" because Hughes had swatted his broad neck with the file folder. "What was that for?"

"Cadet Hawkeye is a hero," said Hughes.

"But you just said –"

" _I_ am hot, and _I_ am tired, and _I_ am five minutes from a well-deserved leave that will take me back to Central City to see the most beautiful woman in the world, who is desperate for my company and who is, no doubt, devising mind-blowing ways to welcome me home. _You_ are just an asshole."

"The fuck did I say?" the sergeant muttered. Hughes looked at the man: grey-haired and – to be kind, as if he deserved it – not exactly in fighting trim. He clearly hadn't internalized the principle that an officer could express exasperation, disbelief, and general opprobrium toward the men and women in his own command, but he had better leave another officer's people alone.

Then, there was a lot this guy didn't seem to have internalized. What else should Hughes expect out of a fat fuck who was willing to sit around the office pushing papers while better people got sent off to do the fighting? People like 19-year-old Cadet Hawkeye, whose record had been exemplary, prior to today, and was now only slightly amended to "exemplary, possibly prone to bizarre accidents." Hughes genuinely liked Hawkeye; she was shrewd and lethal without having a cruel bone in her body, and her sniper rifle had personally saved his ass on more than one occasion.

If Hughes was honest with himself, he wasn't just indignant on the young cadet's behalf. It bothered him _most_ that this idiot had been riding his desk while 24-year-old Captain Maes Hughes got sent to the front. Hughes didn't like the swell of bitterness that thought brought on. Was this the life he had to look forward to? Bursts of concentrated anger at anyone who hadn't been at the front with him because they hadn't _been there_ , man, they didn't _know_? Did he have to look forward to turning into his father and telling increasingly implausible stories about his own war, until he and Gracia spawned a kid stupid enough to take the stories seriously and join the military in some misguided attempt to live up to them?

 _That is not a good life plan, Maes_ , he thought. _Get a better one._

"Here," Hughes said, dropping the last file into the sergeant's tiller. "They're all yours now." Hawkeye and the other cadets he'd been escorting from the front were out of his hands. He could catch a train home, spend three weeks' leave with Gracia, and then report back to General Headquarters for his new peacetime assignment.

 _Peacetime._ That was a pretty word – as long as you didn't think of "peace" as a synonym for "what happens when you flatten the other side until there's nothing left to burn." Hughes decided that he wasn't going to think about that just now. He left the office behind and stepped into the hallway. . .

. . .where he faced the baffling sight of Roy Mustang, leaning casually against the opposite wall. "Hey, Hughesie." Roy's voice came slowly, in the thick baritone that could add gravity to his most trivial pronouncements. "About time you got done."

It wasn't a surprise, Roy being there. They had agreed to meet up for drinks and, while any plan that relied on Roy showing up when he said he would was best regarded as theoretical, Hughes wasn't surprised that he had come. What he couldn't process was Roy standing still with his hands in his pockets, eyes trained on the clock over the sergeant's door. He should have been provoking the staff to fisticuffs over a political argument, showing off his pyrokinetic alchemy gloves to the station staff, or regaling the giggling secretarial pool with his impressions of Amestrian film stars.

"I thought I'd missed you," Hughes said. "You usually know how to make an entrance."

"I'll try to be more of an asshole, next time," Roy said. "I know I have a reputation to maintain."

"Don't sell yourself short," Hughes replied. "You can be exceptionally charming _or_ exceptionally alienating. I can never predict which Roy Mustang's going to show up, but that's the fun of it."

"I like to think so." Roy raised his eyes, blinking as though there might be a bright light behind Hughes' head. His hair disheveled, sweat beading on his forehead, he stopped looking like Major Mustang, Flame Alchemist, and turned back into the guy who had, for a brief but extremely vivid period of time, shared Hughes' bed every night. In the year since they had met up again at the front, they had managed not to mention that at all. And no need to mention it _now_. Whatever had been between them at the Academy, it was completely off the table. Except. . .Hughes thought. But no.

Hughes clapped his friend on the back, and steered him toward the door. Best to get out of here before somebody found an excuse to put them to work. "Have you figured out where you're spending your leave?" Hughes asked.

East City," Roy said. "Probably. I'll see." Hughes remembered, back in the Academy, envying the perpetual vagueness of Roy's vacation plans. Contrasted to his own never-ending parade of obligations -- to family, childhood friends, and children of his father's friends who were assumed to be his friends long after any mutual affinity had passed – Roy's vagueness about his own personal ties had a taste of tantalizing freedom. Now, it just sounded like a sad way to go home from a war.

"You have people in East?" Hughes asked, with no expectation of getting a useful answer.

"I have many many people," Roy said. "People who miss me. It would be a shame to deprive them. Granted, half of them are chorus girls."

This _could_ have been true – even by military standards, Roy's familiarity with the nation's dance halls and whorehouses was the stuff of legend -- though Hughes wondered if the other half were chorus _boys_. No need to bring that reservation up, though. Roy knew Hughes hadn't developed amnesia since the Academy, even if it was sometimes politic to act like he had. Besides. Most of the time, when Roy told lies, it wasn't because he expected you to believe them.

"I'm here at least one more night," Hughes said. "The trains back to Central are so packed, they're giving passes out by lottery. With luck, I'll get out of here tomorrow. But tonight, I have a hotel room, and we should go there, and we should get very very drunk." Leaning closer to look at Roy's half-glassy eyes, he asked, "Did you start without me?"

"Surprisingly, no. I'm tired, not drunk. The brigadier had the alchemy squadron _drilling_ of all things –" Roy said, with the oblivious indignation of someone from an elite group who suddenly found himself treated like any other person – "and I just came from . . .hey, did you know Hawkeye's in the infirmary?"

"You saw her? How is she?"

"I just happened to see her there. I stopped by the clinic on the way here, because I knew I was headed this way from the unit station and the brigadier needed someone to carry some papers and –"

"Yeah yeah –" Hughes waved his hand so Roy would get on with it. "Is she okay? Should I go see her?"

"She's probably asleep. They gave her a sedative. She's fine. I don't even think it was that much of a burn. More shock than anything."

Knowing the girl was all right, Hughes didn't mind asking, "How the hell do you burn your back in a cooking accident?"

"From what I understood, a camp stove blew up on her? She was probably _lucky_ to have her back turned. They're not supposed to have those things in the barracks, but you know how it is. Rations taste so bad at room temperature. But like I said, she seemed fine. They gave her some drugs and she was babbling a little. It was cute."

"Cute?" Hughes demanded. "Mustang, if you are messing with that girl. . ." He had thought Roy shared his protective attitude toward the young sniper; he'd known her family or something, back in the East. But, she _was_ cute. . .and he was Roy Mustang.

"I'm innocent." Roy spread his hands. Hughes gave him a look, and Roy amended, "Innocent _of that_."

Hughes felt relief, followed by guilt that his relief might not have been entirely based on concern for Hawkeye. Which was stupid, anyway. Roy didn't want to complicate (re-complicate?) their friendship any more than Hughes did. They were just going to have a drink, because they were friends and soldiers, and that was it.

Now, of course, Hughes had to redouble his defense of Hawkeye so it wasn't obvious he'd been thinking about Roy. "Mustang, I swear, that girl has the makings of a good soldier if some guy like you doesn't swoop her up or scare her off."

"Some guy like me? What is that supposed to --? All right, I know exactly what that's supposed to mean." Roy shrugged, but then, as they were stepping through the front door into the fading sunlight, he asked, "Is that what we want the pretty girls to grow up to be? Good soldiers?"

"Better than bad ones," Hughes answered.

"That's the truth." Roy looked at the back of his hand. "Remind me. Which kind are we again?"

*

The sun had almost set, and they were sprawling in the lush green grass of Border City Park. It felt hotter, somehow, than it had back at the front.

Hughes had a theory. Spreading his hands to frame the marble façade of the Governor's Palace on the other side of the Commons, he said, "They built this town from nothing, sixty years ago, to look like a smaller version of Central City. The block we just walked down is laid out exactly like Gracia's neighborhood near Central U. They copied major buildings, street plans, even this park. Except Central has moderate weather year round, and Border is still in the middle of the goddamn desert."

Roy glanced up at a palm tree, which the Border City fathers had substituted for Central's willows. It was the only apparent concession to climate. "So at the front we knew what we were in for. But if you're from Central, you come here and you expect it to feel like home. Then when it doesn't, it feels even hotter than it actually is?"

"That's the theory."

"Hmm." Roy took a paper bag from Hughes, lifting it to drink from the cheap bottle of whiskey they were sharing. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, "I'm not from Central, and I'm still fucking hot."

Hughes shrugged and took the bottle back. "They even import the grass so they can have a green spot in the middle of the city. Can you imagine how much money they waste on watering it?"

Roy dug a hand into the thick turf and pulled up a clump. Looking at the roots, he said, "Forget the money. What about the _water_ they waste? It's not a limitless resource, especially in this part of the world. Imagine what Ishbal could do with this much water." He stopped, and his face twisted into a grimace. "Not a whole lot, anymore."

"Hey." Hughes put a hand on Roy's shoulder. The fabric of the uniform scratched his skin, but he left it there, spreading out his fingers. "I know how you feel. But let's try not thinking about all that for a while. We're back in one piece, and this is the last night we've got, so let's appreciate it."

Roy looked down at Hughes' hand. "You're right. I should try to appreciate being human again." Then he pulled away, lay down on his back, and took a swig of whiskey. Putting the bottle down, he said, "That's literal, by the way. Now that we're out of the war zone, I'm officially classified as 'personnel' instead of 'equipment'."

"Alchemists are equipment?"

"Technically, weapons. It's an accounting measure or . . .maybe it's actuarial. I forget the difference. When High Command is running the numbers, maybe a transport vehicle is worth the lives of five men. An artillery cannon could be worth fifty. Your average alchemist? A hundred men. Your friend Mustang, the Flame Alchemist?" He handed the bottle back to Hughes, and said, "I get five."

"Hundred?" Hughes choked out.

"Indeed," said Roy. "It's insulting, right? You'd think _at least_ a thousand good Amestrian kids would have to die before they let anything happen to Mustang. These are Amestrian lives, understand. They must have one for Ishbalan lives, but who's gonna ask to look at that balance sheet?"

"Roy. . ." Hughes was going to say, _Let it go_ or _Not tonight._ When he looked over, though, he saw that Roy had put on his glove. He snapped his fingers, and a ball of fire appeared, then hovered in the air for a moment.

"It's pretty, you know?" Roy moved his hand, and the ball of flame moved with it. "That's the crazy part. How many other weapons of mass destruction double so nicely as party tricks?"

"Put that out. I'm serious." Hughes put his fingers on the underside of Roy's wrist. "Whatever we think about this phony city, I don't want to burn it down."

Roy closed his hand. The flame disappeared as quickly as it had materialized.

"Give me that." Hughes grabbed Roy's glove and stuffed it into his own pocket. Then he raised a hand, cautiously, to the back of Roy's neck, touching the fingers to his friend's skin. "We're back, Roy. We're safe. It's all right."

They sat there in silence, for a long moment. Then Roy turned his back. "Don't be too nice to me, Maes. I appreciate the thought, but there's no way it ends well. Tell me more about you, all right? When you get back to Central, is your old man going to be proud our generation finally won a war -- if that's what we've decided we're calling this -- or jealous that it wasn't him?

"Oh. Wow. I guess I didn't. . .Dad died a couple years ago." Hughes cleared his throat. "When you were in alchemy training and the two of us weren't so much . . . Sorry I didn't tell you. I guess it never came up."

"God, I –" Roy shifted so that he could look at Hughes again. "I liked the old guy. He would give me this look like, ' _You_ , Roy Mustang, bleeding-heart sissy-boy, with your suspect ancestry, and your newfangled alchemy. You are everything that is wrong with my military.' " Hughes smiled. It was a pretty good impression. Weirdly gratifying that Roy remembered. "And then he'd pour me whiskey shots," Roy continued, "and let me hustle him at chess. He was all right, man. I'm sorry.

Hughes recalled the handful of times Roy had been at his house being nerve-wracking as hell. In spite of Maes' anxiety, though, Martin Hughes had accepted his son's friend with very little real conflict. Of course, Maes hadn't introduced him as "my friend Roy, who I'm also fucking." But he'd always had a sense his father grasped the subtext. Not that he knew for sure. During the course of Martin's last illness, which would have been the time for Maes to find out if he really wanted to know, Hughes was seeing Gracia and whatever he'd gotten up to at the Academy hadn't mattered anymore. Or so he'd told himself.

"I've dealt with it," Hughes told Roy. "As much as you ever do, I guess. Just stuff like. . .my sister's getting married next year. She wants me to walk her down the aisle, and of course it should have been Dad."

"Little Willa?" Roy actually smiled. "With the praying mantis collection and all the stuffed dogs?"

"Reality check, my friend. Little Willa is older than we were. She's engaged to a guy on her entomology field team from Central U. I keep telling them they're gonna be broke and bug-bitten forever but -- it's what she loves. It's good."

"Cool. So." Roy buried his hand in the grass again. "Will it be a double wedding, you think?"

"Gracia's a tolerant woman, but I think she'd draw the line at the millipede-themed decoration scheme my sister has her eye on." Hughes cleared his throat. "But yes. Assuming this is what you're really asking. I want to get married. Soon. I'm pretty sure Gracia feels the same way."

"I am pretty sure as well." Roy's smile became strained as he said, "Congratulations. It's not your fault I wish I was spending my last night here with somebody who didn't have a woman back home."

Hughes couldn't keep the hard edge out of his voice when he said, "If you need to go get laid, don't let me get in your way."

"What?" Roy stared. Hughes wondered what he wasn't getting, until Roy said in his low rumble, "I meant you, dumbass. I wish I was here with someone who wasn't engaged and it was still you."

"Oh. Well. Your sentence structure definitely could have been clearer."

They looked at each other, Hughes trying to figure what exactly they'd just admitted. Roy covered his mouth and started to laugh. "I'm sorry, – I'm sorry, this shouldn't be funny, but it's amazingly academic. Nothing's going to happen because even if you would, which you wouldn't. . .I don't want Gracia to hate me. I don't want _you_ to hate me because you're afraid that she would hate me."

"She doesn't. Hate you. She knows about us at the Academy – knows because I told her. And she's not my fiancée. In fact, we're _explicitly_ not exclusive, and she's the one who made me have the conversation before I deployed."

It hadn't been the most fun conversation Hughes had ever had. He didn't want to think about Gracia with anyone else, and he was sure, at the time, he didn't want to be with anyone else. But she had meant it for him. _If you're far away and you're lonely,_ was what she had said, _If you need somebody, I don't want you to feel guilty on top of that._ Of course, she probably had some idea about a dark-eyed, _female_ stranger in a bar somewhere. Not Roy Mustang stampeding back into his life. But then life never did what you expected, and this seemed to go double when Roy got involved.

"Why am I just hearing about this now?" Roy demanded.

"It wouldn't exactly come up in conversation around the officers’ mess."

"I know, but . . .there are married guys in the service who run around. You _don't_. I notice. So. . .all this time, you could have, but you haven't?"

"I _haven't_ ," he said. "Because it seemed dumb and weak. Like giving up."

"Ahh." Roy looked away. "I guess I asked for that."

"Seemed," Hughes put his hand to Roy's cheekbone, and ran a thumb down to stroke his chin. "Before tonight."

"Oh," Roy mouthed. "Oh, that's -- that's nice, actually. Maybe we should go back to that hotel and – what's the euphemism I'm looking for?"

"Celebrate living."

"Yes," Roy said, "to living." He put his mouth on the whiskey bottle and tipped it back to catch the last drops.

*

By the time they got up to the hotel room, Roy was thoroughly wasted. Hughes was drunk enough to be unclear about exactly how drunk he was, but Roy looked like he wasn't sure what time zone he was in. Hughes took a moment to wonder if he should be worried about this – the idea that it was possible for _him_ to be taking advantage of _Roy_ felt weird, but that didn't make it impossible.

Still. Roy had always been a little drunk when they were together – they'd both mostly always been drunk in any kind of social context – and he was apparently still a lightweight. But that didn't mean Roy didn't know what he wanted, and Hughes remembered enough to know what Roy _liked_.

Hughes threw off his uniform jacked and crashed down on the bed. The springs collapsed beneath him and then failed to spring up. You got what you paid for, he supposed, and even if he could have afforded it, he would somehow have felt worse going back to Gracia after fucking his best friend in an _expensive_ hotel.

"Whose bright idea was it to give us wool uniforms?" Hughes groaned.

Roy was just standing there, looking at the wall. "Roy!" Hughes snapped his fingers to see if Roy would turn, then realized that was a poor choice of gesture. Roy raised his own hand and looked at it as though it were a foreign object he had picked up off the ground. Hughes still had the alchemy gloves in his pocket. There weren't going to be any accidental fires in this room, but still. Roy was supposed to be thinking about life. Not whatever he saw when he looked at his hands.

Hughes stood again and took Roy by the wrist. His fingertips met and when Roy looked down, Hughes increased the pressure. "Come on," Hughes said. "We're gonna celebrate living, remember." He raised his other hand to smooth back Roy's sweat-soaked hair. "We survived."

"Are you sure?" Roy asked.

"All right," Hughes answered. "You're getting too existential for me. You're an alchemist. I'm a dumb Army guy. I focus on the mission and right now I'm getting you out of these clothes."

Roy stopped resisting. Hughes dropped his hand, and, since Roy still didn't give any sign of independent movement, began unbuttoning the other man's jacket for him. It was a slow process, because Hughes kept stopping to kiss Roy's neck. Still no reaction he could detect, which was starting to border on frustrating – reacting was what Roy was supposed to _do_ \-- and at the same time Hughes was getting unmistakably hard. Then he remembered a trick that had always worked and slid his hands under Roy's jacket but over the top of his cotton undershirt. He rubbed the palm of one hand over Roy's stomach, and slid the other upward to circle his nipple.

"More," Roy gasped.

"There we go," Hughes answered. He leaned in to kiss Roy on the mouth.

And then there was more.

*

When Hughes woke up, he had a string of thoughts more or less simultaneously: it was still too damn hot; with any luck, before the day was over his train would be pulling into Central City station; his dick was really fucking hard; and, Roy Mustang should be in bed next to him to help out with that.

Then he opened his eyes, looked around the room, and noted a distinct lack of Roy. _Well, what were you expecting, really?_ What did Hughes have the right to expect, for that matter? If they weren't stationed together back at Central when their leave was over, it would be easy enough to track Roy down. Until then, life with Gracia would keep him plenty busy – or, hopefully at times, luxuriously unbusy – and Roy had probably taken off in respect for their relationship. That didn't keep Hughes from ripping up the room looking for a note.

He didn't find one. He did discover that Roy had retrieved his gloves from Hughes' pocket, and that the hotel shower had a supply of respectably cold water. This was useful for several reasons.

Clean and even somewhat shaved, Hughes had a few hours to kill by himself in Border City. The lottery results for trains back to Central would be posted at HQ at noon, and until then he didn't want to be where anyone could grab him and put him to work. He wandered back to the Commons and realized his feet had carried him to the tree he and Roy had lounged under last night.

 _Oh no, Hughesie boy, enough of that_. His next thought was to find a pay phone and call Gracia. But long distance was expensive and he decided to wait until he could tell her for sure when he would be home. Or else he was too chickenshit to have a conversation with her after last night. Or else – and this might be getting closer to the truth – she didn't deserve all emotional debris he would end up dumping on her if they talked right now. He would have a long train ride home to sort it all out, to let the desert heat fall away.

Meanwhile, he was standing in a Border City park that wanted to be Central, on grass that had no right to be this green. It was as hot as hell, and there was a vendor up the path selling fruit flavored ice treats in replica Amestrian Military Helmets. He got in line, reached for his money, then glanced at the rack of cheap souvenirs, magazines and tiny stuffed animals.

Oh. Well. There was an inspiration.

"I want a lemon slushie in a replica helmet," he told the vendor. "And one fire-breathing dragon."

*

The infirmary attached to Border City HQ was strictly for the use of headquarters staff and those temporarily posted to command. Instead of the bustling field hospital Hughes had expected, he found himself in a well-polished waiting room. This made very little sense, considering the number of wounded who were being carried from the front every day – the medical trains didn't even stop here, apparently. Another example of fucked-up command priorities, but it wasn't Hughes' job to fix their logistics.

Besides, he was here to visit the victim of a non-regulation grilling device, so it might be just as well.

The matron at the front desk raised an eyebrow. "This young lady is very popular with officers," she said, in the tone of insolence-you-couldn't-quite-pin-down-as-insolence that the functionaries in this town seemed to have perfected.

"I'm here in an official capacity," Hughes said, which was maybe only half a lie.

"The young lady is very popular with persistent officers who claim to be here in an official capacity."

"She's my _sister_ ," Hughes said, which was entirely a lie, and contradicted the previous lie. But the matron glanced at his stripes, shrugged, and led him down the hall.

The woman knocked and pushed her head through the door. "I hope you're decent, Cadet. Your _brother_ is here."

"Who?" asked Riza Hawkeye, and then as he walked in, "Oh, hi, Captain Hughes. I'm sorry I'm such an idiot. Am I in trouble?"

Hawkeye was lying face down on the bed, a sheet draped over but not touching her back. She had to crane her neck to look at him, and Hughes remembered something that had not gone unobserved at the front, that she had the widest brown eyes he had ever seen. Hughes wasn't _really_ a softie, but how could you yell at this kid?

"Three questions, Cadet. Did the contraband stove get confiscated?"

"Yes, sir," she said, checking that her chest was covered as she twisted into a sitting position. "That is – what was left of it."

"Will you ever do it again?"

"No, sir."

"Finally, and most crucial. What the hell were you cooking that was so important for you to violate safety regulations and risk life and limb?"

Her big eyes got bigger and the moment of silence that followed was weird. Why should _that_ be the hard question? Then she relaxed into a smile and said, "Beef macaroni. You know how hard that stuff is to eat cold."

"I do," he agreed. He also knew that soldiers in the field routinely lit bits of spare explosive on fire or used whatever else was on hand to heat food. Nobody would have cared about her non-regulation appliance if she hadn't had the bad luck to blow it up. Tough break on top of a tough break. Then she leaned forward again to check the front of her robe and he noticed the black marks on the back of her neck.

Hughes had caught a glimpse of Hawkeye's tattoos before, when she'd been on labor detail in a tank top. They were obviously the edge of a more elaborate network that extended down her back. Speculation among guys at the front – which Hughes had never engaged in but couldn't help overhearing – as to the actual nature and content of Hawkeye's tattoos was so furious that it was obvious none of them had met any success at getting her top off. _Good for you, kid_ , he'd always thought. Now he said, sympathetically, "I hope you didn't mess up any expensive work."

She blinked up at him. "I'm sorry?"

"Your ink." He pointed at her back. "I hate needles, so just thinking about getting something like that done makes me –" Hughes shuddered, sincerely. "But if you went through all that it would be a shame to screw it up over beef macaroni."

"Oh." She shook her head. "That doesn’t matter. I was young and dumb when I got those."

"No offense," Hughes said. "But how much younger and dumber could you have _been_?"

"You'd be surprised."

"I've got a few years on you," Hughes said, "and I don't exactly consider my young and dumb days to be behind me." This got a faint smile out of her, and he pressed on, encouraged. "Nonetheless, setting your own back on fire takes special skill. So –" He reached into his coat pocket and took out the stuffed dragon he had bought in the park. "In the future. For all your controlled-burning-related needs."

She stared, then tentatively reached out her fingertips to touch it. "Is this a _toy_?" Like maybe she had heard about toys but never seen one up close. That might have been true. Whatever kind of teenage girls volunteered for military service in the middle of a war, it was a good bet that "ones raised with an affectionate home environment with strong support structures" wasn't on the list.

Willa used to have a room full of toys like this one. Maes had helped her put them into storage when they sold their father's house, because he was going to the front and she was going off to do exactly what she wanted to do, in a part of the world that almost never got blown up or set on fire. The thought that in another life it could have been _his_ baby sister lying in a hospital room, miles from anyone who cared, made him want to punch something.

But Hawkeye was already looking at him like he was kind of deficient, so he decided not to explain. He immediately felt guilty for suspecting – what did he suspect exactly? There was a swirling weirdness around the account of events, as Roy and Hawkeye had told it, but he couldn't pin down what was bothering him.

They heard the matron outside. "Major, it is not acceptable for you to be walking in and out of that girl's room –"

"But this is extremely important official business." Hughes and Hawkeye both turned at Roy's voice.

"It is ice cream," said the matron.

"It is extremely important official ice cream. Or, well, it's not dairy at all, it's – here you go, it's actually excellent in the heat –"

Hawkeye broke into a smile. "It's Mr. Mustang. They had to kick him out of here last night."

"Get your ass in here, Roy!" Hughes called.

"Sorry, Captain Hughes requires my assistance!" By the time Roy came in, Hughes was thinking about his story from the night before. _There is no way he was just wandering through this place and happened to see Hawkeye._ It was weird. He couldn't think of a reason on earth that Roy would have for lying, but that made it extra weird.

"Cadet Hawkeye," Roy said, looking straight past Hughes. "I have procured essential supplies for an injured soldier on a hot day." He held up one of the faux helmets from the stand in the park. "I hope this is acceptable?"

"Yes, sir," she said formally, then, with a sudden telltale squeak in her voice, "Is that lemon?"

"Your favorite."

"It _is_ my favorite." Hughes felt chagrinned that he had settled for trying to be cute instead of bringing the girl something she might actually want.

"Sorry it's a little melted." Roy wiped the side of the dish with a finger. He handed Hawkeye the dessert and darted the finger into his mouth, licking the tip of it before he continued. This was a really bad time for Hughes to be thinking about what that gesture was making him think about. "Theoretically there was one for each of us," Roy said, "but I lost mine to bribing the matron. Which ought to keep her off our backs for a minute or two. How are you?"

"Much better," said Hawkeye. "They're going to release me in time to go home with the rest of my unit tonight. Thanks for making me come down here, though. I thought I could leave it be but I probably was in shock. I just didn't realize it at the time."

"Hence the term 'shock.' Now, remember, ignoring medical advice doesn't make you tough. So change the bandages frequently, look out for infection, and hydrate. Especially in this weather."

"Like we talked about," she said.

Here was the thing. Hughes wasn't stupid. He had known more or less from the start that Roy's life was highly compartmentalized. It just rarely occurred to him to think about the compartments he, Maes Hughes, didn't have access to. Roy's casual intimacy with Hawkeye, which went beyond anything Hughes had previously suspected, would have been unnerving even if it had been perfectly innocent. Right now, though, Hughes wasn't convinced that it was.

It was a good time, Hughes decided, to not be in this room anymore. "I've got to get out of here," he said.

Without looking up, Roy said, "Sorry I missed you last night, Hughesie."

"Whatever." Hughes didn't look at Roy either. "We can catch up later. I gotta run up to HQ and see if my train assignment is in. I'm heading back to Central to see my _fiancée_." That came across more hostile -- and more directed-at-Roy – than Hughes had intended, and Hawkeye's eyes darted up to look between the two of them.

Hughes stepped backward toward the door. Roy looked down at Hawkeye. "I'm here until they kick me out," he promised.

*

Hughes walked back to HQ, where he found out he had gotten lucky. His rail pass had come through for the afternoon. He needed to be at the station in two hours.

This was the time to call Gracia. Time to call her and tell her he was coming home, tonight, that he would be in bed with her, tonight. He was coming home to ask her to marry him, and sleep in her bed, and never ever stray not even if she gave him permission. Hughes would come home and slough off the war and be with Gracia always, far away from the border and the front and alchemists and their incomprehensible problems.

Except that when he looked at it from a certain angle, the problem was far too comprehensible. There was a direct line from Roy Mustang's hands, which could shoot fire, to Riza Hawkeye's back, which had been burned. He had specialized in criminal investigation, at the Academy, and he was a fan of the shortest distance between premise A and conclusion B. The connection hadn't crossed his mind yesterday, when it almost certainly should have. That had nothing to do with a bunch of flimsy cover stories. It hadn't even (he thought, he hoped) had much to do with his own eagerness to have Roy in his bed. What it tripped up on was, "Why?" What motive could Roy possibly have had to hurt that kid?" It must have been an accident. But if he had done it, even if it had been an accident, there was no way Hawkeye would have sat there smiling up at him.

 _Except that happens all the time_ , he thought. People get mistreated and react to it in all kinds of ways.

But that was crazy. There had to be an easier answer. Not simpler. Just easier. More in-character. Fine, then. They were covering something up, because they'd been together when she got hurt. They'd been together because they were sleeping together. Roy and Hawkeye had been fraternizing the hell out of each other, since the front and maybe longer. It bothered him – of course it would bother him, if only because Roy should have told him about it. But then. . . if Hughes could be in love with Gracia and be in whatever he was in with Roy, wasn't it selfish to doubt what Roy could feel for someone else?

So, fine. Roy had been with Hawkeye and there had been some kind of a stove accident and he'd been embarrassed to admit he was there when he shouldn't have been. . .except then he showed up at the hospital until they kicked him out and . . .

 _It's not my job to solve these people's problems_ , Hughes told himself. And _This is Roy_. Which meant exactly what? This is your friend who set half of Ishbal Province on fire, human beings included, just by snapping his fingers. This is the Flame Alchemist, who used his hands to do whatever High Command told him to do. But you think he'd balk at hurting a vulnerable girl?

 _Actually, yes_.

_Based on. . .?_

Oh, hell. There had to be a way for this to be easier.

*

Hughes went back to the hotel for the bag he had checked at the front desk. Roy was there, sprawled on a couch in the lobby. Because however much Hughes wanted things to be easy, why should he think Roy would accommodate that?

They didn't make eye contact while Hughes retrieved his rucksack, but as he walked out, Roy fell into step behind him and said, "The clerk was telling me there's a lovely view from the roof. Maybe even a cool breeze."

Hughes could have kept walking. He also could have turned around and decked Roy, which was tempting except that, at this point, a fistfight between them might cross the line from manly brawling into domestic violence. He let Roy usher him into the staircase and they took the steps two at a time. The building was squat; the roof was littered and had a view of the alley. There was nothing in the way of a breeze, and they had to stand in a tiny corner of shade to keep it from being unbearably hot.

But they were alone.

"I couldn't think of anything to say," Roy told him.

"About _what_?"

"That's why I didn't write a note. This morning. I loved last night, but you're going home to Gracia. I didn't think there was anything to say." When Hughes stayed silent, Roy shifted on his feet. "You seemed pissed off at the hospital so I thought –"

"Oh, I'm pissed off. It's just that the things I'm pissed off about go so far beyond your note-leaving skills at this point. When I find out why you lied to me, I'll know exactly what I'm pissed off about."

"Lied?"

"Oh, stop it, Roy. You didn't just run into Hawkeye at the clinic while you were carrying a note from the brigadier. Hawkeye said you told her to come down there, for one thing. She also didn't know what she was supposedly cooking when she got hurt. Maybe she's just disoriented. But I saw that hospital. You wouldn't have been able to wander past the palace guard there and just happen to see her."

"I don't know. I don't remember. What do you think you're proving?"

"I'm trying not to be proving what it seems like I'm proving."

Roy was, of course, an exceptional card player. He didn't have any kind of reliable poker face. It was just that his mannerisms could be so all-over-the-place that most opponents had trouble pinning him down. The one person he had never outbluffed since their first term together at the Academy, the one person he had eventually refused to play with, was Hughes. Hughes knew exactly where to look for all of Roy's tells.

Not that this one was hard. Roy raised his right hand from his side and, absently, rubbed his fingers together, just like he did when he was starting a fire. Hughes stared, and after a second, Roy looked down at where he was staring.

"You burned that girl, Roy. Holy shit. You two were playing some kind of crazy sex game and it got way out of hand and you _burned_ her."

"It wasn't like that! She _told me_ to."

"I know how sex games work, Roy. That doesn't disprove my theory." Not that he actually _knew_ , but he'd read a few things. The crazy part was, Hughes now hoped this was the answer. _My friend is in a consensual sado-masochistic relationship with a lower ranking officer, and yeah he put her in the hospital but it wasn't that bad and then he brought her ice cream and all-in-all seems to have made her day. If he promises he'll be more careful next time, we can all go home._. That was starting to feel like a good outcome.

Roy stiffened and held out a hand. "All right. I see what's going on here. I can explain. I don't know what you'll think when you've heard it but --" He licked his lips. "You're making a category error."

"A category error?"

"Yes. You're viewing this situation as belonging to a certain category when it actually belongs to --."

"I know what a fucking category error is."

"All right, then. You look at me and Hawkeye, you see there's something between us, you don't know what it is. You assign it to the category of 'sex.' That couldn't be further from the truth. There's never been anything like that between me and her, and I've known her for years. "

"If this isn't about sex," Hughes said between clenched teeth,"it's even weirder than I thought. What category should I be assigning this to?"

"Alchemy."

"That's great!" said Hughes. "That's my new favorite category. I'm glad there's something that goes in that category besides burning villages. You're handling it girl by girl now?"

"Riza Hawkeye asked me to do something very specific. Something that I can promise will never be repeated. And," Roy continued. "I'm serious, this is very very secret. You can keep this secret. Right?"

Hughes crossed his arms. "You tell me what the damn secret is and I'll be the judge of that."

"These people, Hughes. The ones who give the orders. On top of everything, they don't really understand how alchemy works. The stuff that I do. With the flames. It's not entirely an innate power. There's a formula that only I know and it's also – or it was until yesterday – tattooed on Riza Hawkeye's back. In code, of course."

"Of course. Because otherwise this story would sound stupid."

"Don't!" Roy snapped. "Don't demand for me to tell you the truth and then blame me when it doesn't fit your idea of what's plausible. I'm well aware that my whole life is really fucking implausible. Hawkeye had this tattoo and, God – I swear, she used to be proud of it. Then she came to Ishbal and she saw what flame alchemy did – she saw what _I_ did. She didn't want that attached to her body anymore. So she asked me. She asked me to burn it." Roy swallowed. "She asked me to burn it off of her skin."

"And at that point," Hughes speculated, "You said, 'This is a military town, inhabited almost entirely by drunk soldiers who make regrettable body art decisions every day. If you want to get rid of a tattoo, there are safe and sterile ways to cover it up. Let me help you make a few phone calls.' Right?"

"This isn't a conventional tattoo. I don't even know if it would have come off the normal way."

"You don't know, which means you didn't try. Which. . . do you have any idea what you've put me in the middle of?"

"You put yourself in the middle," Roy snapped. "I didn't ask you to."

"I _am_ in the middle of it, you moron. I'm responsible for Hawkeye, for one thing, because she was on my roster when she got hurt. No, not just because of that. Because she's a kid who doesn't deserve to get taken advantage of. You're going to sit here and tell me that you hurt her because she told you to. And I'm supposed to take your word for it."

"No!" Roy started to protest. Then he closed his mouth and stepped back, surprised. "No. The answer really is 'no.' The thing is, you're right."

"I am?"

"Yes," Roy said quietly. "Because I can sit here and justify myself all day. But what if I'm a liar? What if I'm the guy who spent too long doing nasty things down in the dungeons and got a taste for burning people? What if I found someone I could bully into playing along and next time it’s worse?"

Hughes stepped back, spreading his hands. "I didn't accuse you of anything like that."

"You were thinking it. You were at least considering it as a possibility. Unless you're complete shit as an investigator, which you clearly aren't." Roy laughed bitterly. "It makes a hell of a lot more sense than this mystical tattoo bullshit I've been feeding you."

It wasn't what Hughes had been thinking. No. It was merely a logical conclusion of everything he had been thinking, a conclusion he had been tying his mind in knots trying not to reach. "If I even think," he said. "Roy, if I even consider the possibility that could be true. If I think that and I don't call you out on it because we're – because we're whatever the hell we are?"

"That is the worst part," said Roy. "The worst part for me. Not that you should give a shit. Of all the things I gave up in Ishbal, this is the one that means least to anyone besides me. But I gave up the right to look at you right now and say, 'No, no, Hughes, I'm a good guy. How can you believe I'd do that?'"

Roy turned his face toward the wall, and Hughes wanted very badly to touch his shoulder. He clenched his hand into a fist, instead, and held it to his side. "We all gave up a lot of moral high ground in this war," Hughes said. "Please understand. I have to reclaim what I can."

"We all do. Do what you have to."

"I have to talk to Hawkeye." Hughes punched at the wall, slamming his fist a few inches from Roy's face. "Goddammit. I'm gonna miss my train."

Roy slumped against the wall and mouthed, _Sorry_ , so faintly that Hughes could hardly make out the word.

*

Hughes found Hawkeye's unit in a training room back at HQ. Through the glass on the door, he saw her seated toward the rear. She leaned forward to keep her back away from the chair, but he only noticed because he knew. A thought flashed across his mind – she looks _fine_ , you're making too much of this. It would be the easiest thing in the world to walk away.

He opened the door. The lieutenant who had been leading the briefing looked annoyed, but Hughes wouldn't have expected otherwise at this point. She had to let him in anyway. He could see himself enjoying these Captain's stripes in the future.

"Cadets," Hughes barked, "as you prepare to depart the field!" Then he launched into the kind of pep talk/”thank you for your service” spiel that he could do in his sleep by now. He kept it up for about a minute and a half, then, satisfied he had confused them sufficiently without wearing out his welcome, announced, "Of course, I will be needing a volunteer to assist me. How about –" He looked past a row of raised hands and, as though he had just lighted on her, pointed. "Hawkeye!"

She looked maybe-not-quite-surprised-enough as she came to the door, then fell right into step behind him. Hughes scanned the corridor, looking for some private place they could have this conversation. You couldn't just drag a girl into the men's room without someone noticing -- which was for the best, but inconvenient at the moment. Behind him, she said, "I want to thank you for your display of concern this morning, sir. I'm happy to tell you Hua Mulan is resting peacefully."

Hughes stopped and turned. "Who?"

"The dragon. I named her for a lengendary Xingese warrior because –" Hawkeye shook her head, "It's silly. I'm sorry. But thank you." She ducked her head and gave a shy smile. With mounting horror, Hughes realized, _She thinks we're friends. She thinks I pulled her out specially because we're friends and I want to goof off before she goes home._ He cursed himself for making everyone think he was such a damn nice guy, because what would that look on her face turn into when he had to be the bad cop?

"Here." Hughes blindly pushed open the door to a room that turned out to be unoccupied. He flicked on the light and, remembering his training for working with female subordinates – give her space, don't let her feel threatened, don't block the exits -- stepped back and said, "Shut the door."

Hawkeye obeyed, but looked around, puzzled, "Are we making coffee, sir? It's a little hot." They were in some kind of auxiliary kitchen, and it was sweltering, which might be why the room wasn't being used.

"Lock it," he said. She kept her eyes on him, but pressed the lock closed. "I didn't really need a volunteer, Cadet. We need to talk."

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Yes, but you don't know why –"

"I have an idea. Believe me. I know Mr. Mustang is not always the easiest person to deal with. But he obviously thinks very highly of you, and I'm sure whatever differences you're having –"

Hughes remembered that morning in the hospital, he and Roy avoiding each other's eyes. The girl didn't miss much, but why the hell would she think she was supposed to mediate between them?

"I just talked to Roy," said Hughes. "You're right that we're having some – differences – but what we talked about was you." Hughes watched her closely. The first reaction was important. "Roy told me what really happened to your back."

"He did? Why the hell --?" Hughes felt relief that her first reaction seemed to be annoyance. Then, in a quieter voice, she asked, "Is he in trouble?"

"Do you think he should be in trouble?"

"No."

"But he hurt you."

Her chin jutted up. "Because I told him to."

"To be absolutely clear what happened. He burned your back. Because you told him to."

"Yes," said Hawkeye.

"Shouldn't you be asking if you're in trouble?"

"Why would I be in trouble? It's my body."

"No-o-o." Hughes dragged the word out with exaggerated patience. "It's a finely tuned instrument of destruction, to which the Amestrian Armed Forces have devoted a good deal of training and expense. Malingering is serious. Jail time serious. Especially in a war zone."

"Respectfully, Captain. We're in Border City. Which is not a war zone. Especially considering that the war is over. Further, a required element of malingering is the intent to get out of duty. All I missed was a half hour of briefing, which they made sure to tell me was coming out of my pay. So will the cost of the hospital bed and the medicine they gave me. Does that satisfy you?" she asked, and there was an edge in her voice when she added, "Sir?"

"No." Hughes pulled his glasses down and touched the bridge of his nose. "That is, I don't need to be satisfied about the regs. I'm not internal affairs. I'm here for my own reasons. I don't want someone getting hurt because I looked the other way. If this really happened because you wanted it, I need you to tell me so."

"I did." Silence hung between them for a moment, and Hawkeye repeated, "I _did_ tell you, because I _did_ ask him, because I _did_ want it." Hughes still didn't speak. "It seems as though I've answered all your questions."

"You can see how this is hard to believe."

"Do you want the truth, Captain? Or do you want something easy to believe?"

Hughes shook his head. "You're even starting to talk like Roy. But you know what? It _is_ hard to believe. It doesn't make sense. Why would he put his alchemy codes _on your back_ in a form he didn't know how to destroy without hurting you? Even Roy usually isn't that elaborate, and I've never known him to be that cruel."

Hawkeye blinked. "Captain, I think you're confused. Mr. Mustang destroyed the tattoos, as I asked him to. But he didn't put them there. My father did."

Hughes had a feeling, suddenly, that he needed to sit down. He braced against the wall instead. "Why would your father do that?"

"He was an alchemist," she said, as though it were an answer, then asked, "Do you get along with your father?"

"He's dead," Hughes said bluntly, wondering how he's managed to talk about the old man more in the past twenty-four hours than in the previous year. "But when he was alive he was all right. Career Army. Got ahead and always had plenty of money, which means he was corrupt as hell. Still angry about the war we lost with Aerugo. Not the last one. The one before you and I were born. He was decent to me, in his way, and I hope to God I don't grow up anything like him. Is that more than you were asking?"

"No. It's about what I thought, I guess." Hawkeye brushed her hair back from her eyes. "My father was an asshole. I can say that, because I stayed with him until the end and did everything he asked. He lived in his own head, he didn't have time for other people, and when he realized I didn't love alchemy, he didn't have time for me, either. But this –" She put a hand to the back of her neck, and rubbed at what Hughes knew was the top of her tattoo. "I was twelve when he did this." She gave a hollow laugh. "He always said _we_ did this. I was too young to think it was anything but an honor. A thousand times I would have given it back, if I could have. Then he died and it was mine to do what I wanted with. So I shared it with Mr. Mustang, because Roy Mustang was the best man that I knew. Then I saw what the war did to him. What _my gift_ allowed him to turn into. The only thing I wanted was to get rid of it, and I'm happy that I did." She laughed again. "Does that make sense? Like you wanted it to?"

"I can see," Hughes said slowly, "why you would want to get rid of it. I can even see why you'd want Roy to be involved. But there must have been another way to do it. Without the pain, without the scars."

"But, Captain. I wanted the pain. I wanted the scars. On _my_ body. Are you telling me I don't have that right?"

"Did Roy understand that part?"

"Mr. Mustang – " she said. "I think Mr. Mustang would do anything I asked him to. I try not to take advantage of it. You should do whatever you think is best. But I don't know how to be sorry about this."

"All right," Hughes said. "All right, all right. I'm not – I don't know what I'm going to do. I've missed my train home, so I'll have some time to think about it. But one last thing. This story you have about getting rid of the formula is all very idealistic, but – the flame alchemy -- the weapon still out there. It's just – at this point, it's Roy."

"I thought of that," Hawkeye said, evenly. "But that's not about what he is. It's about what he does next. What we do next."

"We?" Hughes asked.

"Yes, of course," Hawkeye answered. "Mr. Mustang will need someone to look after him. It seems as though you and I are the most qualified. Don't you think?"

"I need time to think about all of this," said Hughes. And he let her go back to her unit.

*

The bell in the clock tower was striking two when Hughes walked out of HQ. His own train was long gone, and it was five hours until Hawkeye's unit would ship out. Hughes bought a vile sandwich from a street vendor, then spent the afternoon in a movie theater just for the shade. He couldn’t have said what he was watching, while he was watching it, if he'd had a gun to his head. He wondered how worried Gracia would be that he hadn't called. Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow no matter what.

At twenty minutes until seven, Hughes stood on the station platform and watched a surge of blue-coated cadets head for their train. Roy entered from the other side, and walked to meet Hawkeye. She had her hands clasped behind her back; Roy had crossed his arms across his chest.

"Don't let me interrupt," said Hughes, approaching them. They weren't, actually, saying anything. Their heads turned toward him, and he said, "You two are all right, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, you're both fucking crazy and also stupid and reckless. But I guess that's not up to me."

"Thank you," Hawkeye said. She awkwardly offered him a hand, which he almost reached to take. At the last second, she pulled back, turned it into a salute and added, "Sir."

"Just take care of yourself, Hawkeye." Hughes sighed. "Assuming that's an option." He stepped back and repeated, "Don't let me interrupt." He walked away and let them have their good-bye but he couldn't help hearing Roy. _"You have my card. If you need to get in touch me, use it this time." "Yes, sir". "You don't have to call me sir." "I think I do, sir."_

Hughes walked to the entrance of the station. Crowds were streaming past him; nobody wanted to hang around in a Border City train station longer than they had to. He stepped onto an unused platform, where the track was closed for repair, and stood, looking out over BC's miniature skyline. He waited there, sweating into his uniform jacket, until he felt Roy's hand on his shoulder.

"Thank you," Roy said, "for understanding."

"I never said I understood, but --." Hughes shook his head. "That woman has a backbone."

"I'd noticed." Roy's tone was as dry as the desert air. "I'm glad you picked up on it too."

"I've only got my own judgment to go on," Hughes said, "but I'm convinced you didn't strong-arm her into anything."

"I'm not sure getting Riza Hawkeye to do anything she doesn't want to do is possible. It's certainly beyond _me_." There was a current in Roy's voice, a hint of admiration untinged with pity, and. .. something else.

Hughes tilted his head. "She only has to serve for a couple years after she gets her commission." Watching Roy's dark eyes for a reaction, he said, "When she musters out, you should marry her."

"Fuck off," Roy suggested, though without any real energy or malice.

"I'm kind of serious. An ambitious new station chief could use a wife like that to keep him in line."

"I know you're serious. That brings home how seriously warped your worldview can be." Roy dropped his eyes to the platform. "Mutilation isn't a courtship ritual. Not even for alchemists."

"Hey." Hughes put his hand on Roy's shoulder. He'd been probing for a nerve and now was a little sorry he'd hit one. "You know, you didn’t tell me it was her father who put the tattoos on her."

Roy looked up, eyes blank. "Does that make a difference? Considering my life story, I don't always understand the whole 'fathers and children' thing."

"I don't _know_ your life story," Hughes pointed out. "But we can have that fight another time. And of course it makes a difference. There's using another person's body like a memo pad that you can just burn after reading, and – and there's getting dropped into the middle of something you didn't start, and having to deal with it, and making the best choices you can. Now, personally, I think the choice you made here sucked. But it wasn't mine to make, it's not my job to rat you out, and to be fucking honest, there's nobody in the command structure whose moral authority I respect. So where does that leave us?"

"We're the points of our own compass," Roy mused. Looking across the square at the spires of the government palace, he said, "We can keep accepting the shitty options that get dropped in our lap, and building a fake empire on the same rotten foundation or --" He looked down at his right hand, rubbing the fingers together. "We can get to work on building something else."

"Right," Hughes said. "That's the next part."

Roy turned to him. "I thought the next part for you was going home to lie in the arms of your beautiful woman and forget all this ever happened."

"I put my name in for a pass back to Central," Hughes said. "I should be able to catch another train tomorrow."

"Good," said Roy. "Gracia will be glad to have you back."

"I put your name in, too."

Roy laughed, and scratched the back of his neck. "Hughesie. . .I don't have anywhere to stay in Central."

"Gracia has a big place."

Roy's eyebrows went up. "I don't think a place that big _exists_. I don't care how open-minded you think your fiancée is, explaining what I'm doing there isn't going to be a comfortable conversation ."

"You know what conversation I'm worried about? The one that goes, 'Did you see Roy?' 'Yes, I did. I think he was having a nervous breakdown. I left him in the desert. But don't worry, I'm sure those chorus girls are taking care of him. Let's party.' If you think that would go well, then you don't know Gracia at all."

"There were never any chorus girls," Roy mumbled. "Not that I couldn't _find_ some. And." He swallowed. "I'm not having a nervous breakdown."

"Okay. Anything else you want to get off your chest now that you've resolved that you will never ever lie to me again?"

Roy gave a thin smile. "I guess I have resolved that, haven't I? All right then. Hawkeye." He hesitated. "It's not that I don't recognize. . . .She has – " Roy, whose descriptive eloquence on the subject of female beauty Hughes had had many occasions to take in, groped for words before settling on, "She has those eyes. And obviously she's decided to trust me in what I guess is an intimate way. For some reason. It would be really easy -- tempting -- to follow that in a certain direction."

"Just because it would be easy doesn't mean it's wrong," said Hughes. "Hell, even the fact that it's tempting – which just means that it's something you want to do -- doesn't make it wrong. I can't believe that I'm the one who has to tell this to you."

"I like her. Sure. But it's mixed up with all this history we have, and how sick it makes me to think of anything happening to her and I can't tell if I want her or I'm worried about her or – I don't know how to define it."

That would be just like Roy, to think he had discovered, or maybe invented, the idea of a complex emotion. For a moment, Hughes felt a stab of jealousy at just how miserable the guy looked. He knew how to wind Roy up, or make him laugh, or set off his temper, but Hughes was pretty sure he'd never be able to make Roy that miserable if he had a hundred years to try.

He came to the rescue anyway. "There's a word for what you're feeling, Roy."

"There is?"

"Yeah. It's called 'love,' you idiot.."

Roy looked thoughtfully at the horizon, as though what Hughes was saying might make a dent. Then he shook his head. "Nah. That doesn't sound right at all."

"All right, then. You'll have to figure that one out for yourself, but when you finally do, don't say I didn't warn you. Now." He slung a companionable arm around Roy's shoulder. Roy let him lean into the touch, and for a moment, Hughes enjoyed how good it felt to be holding on to this strong and beautiful and exasperating man. He wondered how the hell they had let what they had in those years at the Academy slip away, and why it had taken a war to get it back. "Come on," Hughes said. "We should go see if we can get that terrible hotel room back."

"It's too hot to sleep," Roy said.

"That's all right. We still have a lot to talk about."

And they walked off, together, into the Border City sunset.

**Author's Note:**

> Super-picky end note: I decided for purposes of this story that Roy is telling the truth in canon when he talks about being from the East; so, Madame Christmas's didn't move to Central City until some time later, and he's also telling the truth in this fic when he says he doesn't have a place to stay in Central.


End file.
